Te Roopu Maori - 21

Kia ora whanau,
E ai ki te korero kua mutu tenei wahanga o te tau, kaore i roa kua mutu te tau, a, kua hoki matou ki te kainga, kit e matou whanau mo te hararei, tera pea te mahi mo te tau kei te heke mai. Engari ko te wawata me mutu pai ai tenei tau. Kia kaha ra whanau.

So, apparently it’s the end of this quarter of the year; soon it’ll be all over and we’ll be home with our families on holiday, or maybe working to fund our 2011 antics. However, all we want is to end the year on a high. Keep it up whanau.
   Nga Panui:
   Te Wiki O Te Ture Maori/Maori Law Week was a great success last week. Te Roopu Whai Putake thanks everyone who helped out and participated with Te Wiki O Te Ture Maori.
   Te Rito would like to thank tauira who voted in the 2011 elections and congratulate the successful candidates. Tau ke!
   So, I sit in the library contemplating what to write, and look around at all the lights that are on and the amount of power switches that are switched on but not being used. I venture outside and look around at the buildings as I walk home, and see so many computer screens glaring their shades of blue or photos of families, lights lazily left on, and I wonder: do people have a concept of how much electricity they’re wasting? Not only that, do they understand the impact their wastage is having on our environment? 
   Now, I’m no electricity/power station/power company/environmental expert but reports show that households are wasting $129 million a year, so imagine how much we waste as a university. The majority of New Zealand electricity is supplied by hydro dams and wind farms and are therefore dependant on environmental factors such as rivers and, funnily enough, wind. In 2003 and 2005 we had power shortages due to drought, which resulted in the ultimate ‘save power’ campaign. But why do we need to wait for a crisis to do anything about it? Sure, the electricity demands of New Zealand are going to keep rising, but could it be that they’re only rising to accommodate power wastage that can easily be prevented if we stopped being lazy? If we turned off our computers, switched off the lights, turned off appliances at the wall, and installed this way of living in our pepi and our rangatahi, we may prevent a repeat of the crisis and learn to be kind to our environment.
    Only after the last tree has been cut down.
    Only after the last river has been poisoned.
    Only after the last fish has been caught.
    Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten.
Posted 2:43am Monday 20th September 2010 by Critic.